Page 22 of Puppy Christmas

“Is she?” That unreadable expression melted into a smile. It was a good smile, all devastating attraction and lopsided charm. Lila felt her heart stutter at the sight. “I’m glad. That means it’ll be much easier for me to make her mine.”

Lila knew, from a semantic standpoint, that Ford was speaking of friendship. Having his daughter and her dog trainer on friendly terms meant that it would be that much easier for he and the dog trainer to be on friendly terms. That was all.

But the phrasing, thatmake her mine, was doing strange things to her equilibrium. She wasn’t the sort of woman who cared to belong to anyone—male, female, or anywhere in between—but for a brief flicker, she felt as though she might be willing to make an exception. To belong to Ford, to matter to him, seemed like an experience worth having.

“Emily, there’s a peanut-butter sandwich in the kitchen with your name written all over it,” he said, unaware that the world had just tilted on its axis. “And there’s a bowl of puppy chow for Jeeves. Make sure you don’t get them mixed up. I tasted the kibble, and it’s terrible. I don’t recommend it.”

Emily giggled. “I know. I ate one yesterday. It tastes like worms.”

Finding nothing odd in that pronouncement, Ford straightened and watched his daughter trot out of the room, Jeeves obligingly at her heels. Lila got to her feet and made a motion to follow them to the relative safety of the kitchen, but Ford blocked the door, his wide shoulders almost filling the gap.

“You fell asleep,” she accused. It wasn’t the most pressing issue on her mind, but it seemed the safest.

“I know. I haven’t done that in ages. Thank you.”

“Oh.” She blinked, once again caught unaware. Ford had the disconcerting ability to say the last thing she expected, and with such nonchalance that it threw her seriously off-kilter. “Um. You’re welcome?”

He grinned. The ink smudge had been wiped from his face, but that smile was just as effective in making him appear boyishly charming. “You should have warned me that having a puppy is as bad as having an infant. Jeeves howls.”

“He does not.”

“Like a werewolf under the light of a full moon.”

Lila stiffened. It was one thing for Ford to mock her, but to mock her highly trained puppy was another thing altogether. “I beg your pardon. Jeeves has never howled a day in his life. Did you feed him?”

“Of course.”

“Water him?”

“He was practically attached to a hose.”

“Take him outside to go to the bathroom?”

“Every hour on the hour.” Ford shifted from one foot to the other, his blue eyes twinkling. “I think he did it because he missed you. To be honest, I felt a little like howling myself.”

That was taking things too far—even for a man Lila was coming to realize was unable to open his mouth without nonsense spouting out. “You did no such thing,” she protested. “You don’t even know me. I could be a horrible person. I might troll people on the internet or fail to use my turn signal at a busy intersection.”

He laughed, the sound deep and rich and devastating to her sense of balance. “If you think not using a turn signal is the worst thing a human being can do, I’m pretty sure we’re going to get along fine. Besides, you didn’t out me to Helen this morning, and you just offered to be my daughter’s friend. The way I see it, that makes you damn near perfect.”

She didn’t take that as a compliment. She couldn’t. Perfect was an insult that had been leveled on her far too many times in her life already. It came mostly from men, and mostly with the intention of making her feel about two inches tall.

Patrick Yarmouth had been the most recent transgressor—and the most painful.I can’t keep up with your goddamned perfection, he’d said in the same tone he might have used with a serial killer.Are you even human under all that?

She hadn’t bothered to ask him what “all that” was supposed to be. Her clothes? Her hair? Herskin? There were enough lizard-people conspiracy theorists out there that she wasn’t sure she cared to hear the answer.

“I’m not perfect,” she said stiffly. “And I have half a mind to march over to Helen’s house right now and tell her that I’ve never been to Canada.”

He laughed, but it carried a rueful tinge this time. He also lost some of his swagger, his shoulders coming down a fraction. “Please don’t do that. I know it was wrong of me to encourage her to think we’re dating, but you have no idea what a favor you’d be doing me if you’d pretend to be madly and desperately in love with me. Oh, and jealous in the bargain. Like, the kind of jealous that ends in televisions and baseball bats thrown onto the front lawn.”

Lila tried to keep her stiff upper lip, but it was difficult. Mostly because no one would believe it if she started tossing televisions onto front lawns. Not only was it a terrible waste of resources, but all that broken glass would be devastating to puppy toes. She’d end up spending hours crawling over the yard with tweezers in hand.

“Couldn’t you have just told her you’re not interested in going to her work party?”

“Theoretically? Yes.” He sighed. “But it’s not what you think. My relationship with Helen is…unique.”

“Unique like your relationship with Maddie and Danica?” she guessed.

His eyes flashed with a quick glimmer of humor. “You caught that part, huh? I know how it looks. Itsoundseven worse.”